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Cancer survivors, victims all have stories

Some beat it for decades, others succumb quickly

By Jenni Grubbs

Times Staff Writer

Posted:
06/17/2014 01:00:00 AM MDT

Judy Shaver, center, and Linda Bruntz, right, buy strings for collecting lap beads from Dana Hanson at the Boot Scootin' Christians team booth. After buying the $5 fund-raising string, 2014 Morgan County Relay for Life participants could add a bead with each lap to the string as they passed the booth. (Jenni Grubbs / Fort Morgan Times)

Local band The Sandwich Crew performs during 2014 Morgan County Relay for Life Friday night at Legion Field. Janice McFarland, the grandmother of one of band member Chris Anderson, far right, and a 22-year cancer survivor, was among the crowd watching their show. (Jenni Grubbs / Fort Morgan Times)

There is no such thing as a typical cancer story.

Each one of the people in purple T-shirts at Relay for Life and each one of the people who wrote a name or names on luminaria has tales of the struggles that led to either overcoming or succumbing to one or more of the many, many forms of cancer.

Relay for Life lets people bring those stories out into the open and celebrate those struggles and memories, as well as both the resulting happy and sad endings.

The Judy's Jewels Team walked at Relay in memory of Judy Barnhart, whose "dream was to give cancer patients hats for free," said team member Kim Miller.

A member of the Boot Scootin' Christians team pulls the wagon holding cancer victim Howard Foster's boots, which he wore to church every Sunday. The boots, along with all the yellow, his favorite color. were reminders for the First Christian Church team of why they were doing 2014 Morgan County Relay for Life on Friday at Legion Field. (Jenni Grubbs / Fort Morgan Times)

The Mares Bounce House & Party Fun team brought in a way for people to have fun and make happy memories at the Relay and to remember the people they loved who lost the battle, such as Tammy Spinnuzi, and the survivors they knew, including Petra Gomez, Kay Valles, Amanda Jimenez and Maria Ayala.

Each of these people likely has a distinct story of how they fought and either survived or gotten beaten by cancer.

Long-time survivor

It's been 22 years since Fort Morgan resident Janice McFarland found out she had cancer.

When it happened, she barely even had time to register the diagnosis.

McFarland was undergoing surgery for a totally different problem, diverticulitis, and "when they were putting me back together," the surgeon, Dr. John Collins, "found the nodule of non-Hodgkin lymphoma."

That turned out to be a very good thing.

"Because they found it so early, I'm a survivor," she said.

While she has participated heavily in Relay in the past, this year it was more about seeing her grandson play with his band, The Sandwich Crew, from School for the Performing Arts.

She said some of her family was walking in the Relay for her, though.

Now 72 years old, the whole cancer experience feels like a bad dream she had a long time ago.

"When it's been 22 years, people kind of forget," McFarland said of her cancer story. "But that's all right. I never really felt like I had cancer. I was so worried about the surgery."

But that discovery on the operating table at around age 50 likely was what allows her to be a 22-year survivor.

She had the surgery in May, underwent chemotherapy in mid-June, and finished the treatment around Thanksgiving that same year.

The chemo worked, and no more cancer has popped up on screening in all this time, she said.

Her daughter, Rose Anderson, also is a cancer survivor, but of thyroid cancer.

She also was lucky in that it was caught early and was easy to treat and beat, Anderson said.

In 2007, "I had surgery, and they took my thyroid out," she said. "I still have to go in every year to make sure it hasn't come back into my lymph system."

Short battle

So many cancer stories do not go as smoothly as that of McFarland and Anderson.

Such was the case for Howard Foster, who died after a three-year battle with a lung tumor that spread to his brain, according to his wife, Kaye Foster.

Howard's boots were the symbol of remembrance and hope used by the Boot Scootin' Christians Team from First Christian Church, according to team Captain Dana Hanson.

"Those were the boots he wore to church each Sunday," she said. "He put up a good fight and fought for years. Some year, we'll get a cure for all this yucky stuff."

The Boot Scootin' Christians, all clad in Howard's favor color of yellow, pulled his boots around in a wagon as they walked some of the laps, and then parked them in the booth.

They sold $5 strings for "lap beads" at their booth, with the beads free to add to the string with each lap walked, according to Hanson.

It started with a tumor in his lungs, which he fought and thought he had beaten for a year, but then the headaches began.

It turned out to be a brain tumor that was causing the "severe" headaches. He had two surgeries in January and February, but he "couldn't recover," his wife said, and he died in March, just a few months before the Relay.

"We had one good year in between" the cancers, Kaye Foster remembered.

She said she thinks her husband would have been happy with the way the church's Relay team was remembering him.

"It's awesome," she said. "He walked it two years ago, and last year he was home recovering. It's quite an honor that they used the boots and yellow."

She said it was hard to watch the Relay happening, "but I'm glad I'm here."

Howard was the latest in a long line of his family members to be affected by cancer, Kaye Foster said. He was one of 15 children and had lost two brothers and one sister to cancer.

But Howard did live to age 70, having raised four daughters, who gave him and Kaye nine grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

And he was "still working when he got sick," his wife pointed out.

The strings being sold at the booth celebrating his life by raising money to fight cancer were fairly ubiquitous on the wrists of the Relay walkers, achieving the team's goal of keeping his memory alive.

But all of the teams had cancer stories of people fighting and/or surviving or memories of lost loved ones that gave them motivation for putting one foot in front of the other over and over from sunset to sunrise for Relay for Life.

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